by Frank Tallis
At first, Freud's secret society had only a few members: himself, Alfred Adler, Max Kahane, Rudolf Reitler, and Wilhelm Stekel. However, over the next few years, the circle grew—welcoming names such as Otto Rank (in 1906) and Sándor Ferenczi and Viktor Tausk (in 1908). Among the early “guests” of the society were C. G. Jung and L. Binswanger, 6 April 1907; Karl Abraham, 8 December 1907; A. A. Brill (an Austrian émigré to the United States from the age of thirteen) and Ernest Jones, 6 May 1908; and M. Karpas of New York, 4 April 1909.
In the spring of 1908, the burgeoning psychoanalytic society had begun to assemble a library. This had grown, Ernest Jones tells us, “to impressive proportions” by 1938. Unfortunately, the early arcana of the psychoanalytic movement did not survive that year, which marked the arrival of the Nazis and the library's subsequent destruction.
The description that Graf gives us of the gatherings at Bergasse 19 (with their sacramental atmosphere) is usually taken out of context, particularly by critics of Freud, who use it to create an impression that psychoanalysis is—and always has been—a pseudoreligion rather than a scientific project. However, in Freud's Vienna, secret gatherings were thick on the ground. There was nothing unusual about Freud's group. Behind closed doors, the city was overburdened with earnest men, hunched around tables beneath flickering gaslights, united by common beliefs and convinced that they might change the world. Unfortunately, not all of these societies were benign.
From about 1900, a number of secret societies began to coalesce around the sinister figure of Guido von List—a successful journalist and writer, beloved of the German literati. Eventually these disparate societies united under the banner of a single mystical association: Armanenschaft. The term Arman refers to a mythical tribe of pre-Christian nobles.
The Arman fraternities used a special sign by which they could recognize one another: the eighteenth rune, the fyrfos, or hooked cross. We would all know it by its other name: the swastika. Von List was obsessed with the superiority of the German-speaking peoples and preserving the purity of German bloodlines. He divided humanity into two groups: the Aryan masters, and the “herd people,” by which he mostly meant the Jews and southern races. He wrote of the coming of a German Messiah—The Invincible, the strong one from above, a Wagnerian hero, who would establish a great northern alliance and reign as a god-man, subject to no law but his own.
It is noteworthy that the writings of Von List and his disciples are rarely referenced in twentieth-century histories. When they are referred to, they are usually dismissed as something of a joke, with accompanying remarks to the effect that Von List was not taken very seriously by his contemporaries.
Although we can be fairly sure that the liberal patrons of Vienna's coffeehouses—the likes of Schnitzler, Mahler, Klimt, or Freud—would have had little time for Von List's posturing, we can be absolutely certain that one person at least took Von List's writings very seriously indeed.
Little of Hitler's personal library remains, but some fragments and books have survived. One of these, a book on nationalism, contains a longhand dedication:
To Mr. Adolf Hitler, my dear Arman brother, B. Steininger.
The word Arman might have been employed here as a term of respect or honor, but it's far more likely that Hitler was associated with Von List's Armanenschaft—or a related organization called the High Armanic Order. Hitler would have first encountered Von List's ideas when he was a poverty-stricken artist in Vienna. We know that these ideas made a deep impression on him, because after his rise to power, Hitler incorporated whole passages of Von List's writings into his speeches.
Von List's closest disciple was Josef Adolf Lanz—now better known as Lanz von Liebenfels (a completely fabricated identity that allowed him to claim noble descent). Von Liebenfels proposed the revival of the Knights Templar as an Aryan order, and on Christmas day 1907, he unfurled a flag bearing the swastika on the summit of Burg Werfenstein—their intended seat of power. Liebenfels's most famous work, rejoicing in the extraordinary title Theozoology, or the News about the Little Sodom Monkeys and the Gods’ Electron, envisaged a future society guided by Von List–inspired ideals of racial purity. Liebenfels insisted that a blond heroic race should be raised in secret cloisters, and that Aryans should be trained to exterminate “impure races” by castration and sterilization.
Like Von List's Armanenschaft, Von Liebenfels's cult has always been regarded as something of a joke. Contemporary intellectuals were convinced that he and his followers posed no threat to the established order; however, once again, twentieth-century history reminds us that one can never be too complacent when it comes to secret societies and prophetic visionaries.
Between 1905 and 1931, Von Liebenfels published a journal in Vienna called Ostara (the German goddess of dawn). One of his readers was so keen that he visited Von Liebenfels in 1909 to collect some back issues. In 1951, the aged Von Liebenfels remembered the enthusiastic nineteen-year-old fondly. Indeed, he was pleased to give Hitler the copies he wanted, and because the young man looked “quite poor,” he was moved to give him two kronen to help him get back home in comfort.
The influence of Von Liebenfels on Hitler was not merely ideological (although that would have been bad enough). Of all the Pan-German writers and race theorists around at the time, Von Liebenfels was the most florid. His language was fierce and garish— febrile with maniacal evangelism. Experts claim that Von Liebenfels's cadences are clearly evident in Hitler's Mein Kampf:
With satanic joy on his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate.
All of the above begs the question: Why were there so many secret societies and cults in Vienna around 1900? Vienna was the most civilized city in Europe, enjoying a cultural renaissance and producing unprecedented advances in the arts, science, and philosophy. The alarming answer might be a simple piece of legislation: article 18 of the postrevolutionary “Law on Associations” of 1867.
In a sense, the city was dramatizing the principles of Freudian repression. Essentially, psychoanalysis tells us that if you push something down (for example, a memory), it'll pop up somewhere else (perhaps as a symptom). Article 18 of the “Law on Associations” was all about pushing things down.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was undoubtedly repressive with respect to the formation of societies and associations. A license to convene was required and this was granted only by a specially appointed commissioner. These licenses were not easily obtained and were often given with strings attached. The Freemasons, for example, could meet in Vienna under the auspices of a friendly society—but they were forbidden to work their rituals. The “Law on Associations” was extremely counterproductive, driving subversives underground and “infecting” the body politic in the process. One could argue— perhaps controversially—that the social illness that eventually emerged was National Socialism, and so virulent was this illness, it took a world war to treat it.
In these troubled times, there is still much to learn from events in Vienna in 1900 and the principles of psychoanalysis. Freedom of speech is sacred and should never be compromised. When we consign demons to the unconscious, they do not go away, they simply become more powerful.
Frank Tallis
London 2007
Sources
Gamwell, Lynn and Richard Wells, eds. Sigmund Freud and Art: His Personal Collection of Antiquities. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989.
Graf, Max. “Reminiscences of Professor Sigmund Freud.” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 11, 1942.
Hamann, Brigitte. Hitler's Vienna: a Dictator's Apprenticeship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Jones, Ernest. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Penguin Books Ltd., UK, 1964.
Personal communication to the author concerning the practice of Freemasonry in Habsburg, Vienna, from Dr. Otto Fritsch of th
e Grand Lodge of Austria, 2004.
FRANK TALLIS is a practical clinical psychologist and an expert in obsessional states. He is the author of A Death in Vienna and Vienna Blood, as well as seven nonfiction books on psychology. He is the recipient of a writers’ award from the Arts Council of Great Britain and the New London Writers Award from the London Arts Board. A Death in Vienna was short-listed for the 2005 Crime Writers’ Association Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award. Tallis lives in London.
Vienna Blood is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Frank Tallis
Dossier copyright © 2007 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group.
A division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
MORTALIS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in the United Kingdom by Century Books in 2006.
Published in paperback in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books,
an imprint of The Random House Group, Ltd., in 2007.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49854-0
www.mortalis-books.com
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Praise for: A Death in Vienna
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Part 1
Chapter - 1
Chapter - 2
Chapter - 3
Chapter - 4
Chapter - 5
Chapter - 6
Chapter - 7
Chapter - 8
Chapter - 9
Chapter - 10
Chapter - 11
Chapter - 12
Chapter - 13
Chapter - 14
Chapter - 15
Chapter - 16
Chapter - 17
Chapter - 18
Chapter - 19
Chapter - 20
Chapter - 21
Chapter - 22
Chapter - 23
Chapter - 24
Chapter - 25
Chapter - 26
Chapter - 27
Part 2
Chapter - 28
Chapter - 29
Chapter - 30
Chapter - 31
Chapter - 32
Chapter - 33
Chapter - 34
Chapter - 35
Chapter - 36
Chapter - 37
Chapter - 38
Chapter - 39
Chapter - 40
Chapter - 41
Chapter - 42
Chapter - 43
Chapter - 44
Part 3
Chapter - 45
Chapter - 46
Chapter - 47
Chapter - 48
Chapter - 49
Chapter - 50
Chapter - 51
Chapter - 52
Chapter - 53
Chapter - 54
Chapter - 55
Chapter - 56
Chapter - 57
Chapter - 58
Chapter - 59
Chapter - 60
Chapter - 61
Chapter - 62
Chapter - 63
Chapter - 64
Chapter - 65
Chapter - 66
Chapter - 67
Chapter - 68
Chapter - 69
Chapter - 70
Chapter - 71
Chapter - 72
Chapter - 73
Part 4
Chapter - 74
Chapter - 75
Chapter - 76
Chapter - 77
Chapter - 78
Chapter - 79
Chapter - 80
Chapter - 81
Chapter - 82
Chapter - 83
Chapter - 84
Chapter - 85
Chapter - 86
Chapter - 87
Chapter - 88
Acknowledgments
Sources
About the Author
Copyright
